I like to think about us a lot.

The way you held me the morning after; how you forgot the night before.

I like to pretend that I’m OK–that I’m better now; that what you were was a burn that scabbed and bled but eventually healed.

I can feel the slow palpitations in my heart when someone says a name that sounds like yours.

They remind me of the ones that once echoed into your chest. The ones you used to touch when they surfaced through each of my ribs. The ones that you cultivated in your hands; with your lips–the ones you bred from inside of everything I had once though was mine.

The ones that still belong to you.

So I wonder now: the parts of me that you took; the me that didn’t return.

I’ve been different. Less lovely, less impressive–less in love. More eager, more helpless, more obsessive–more lost.

I remember San Francisco. I remember New York; LA, Miami, but how it’s Toronto, still, that has the you I can’t forget and the me that I could never find.

If I had done nothing wrong, how could we never be right? Which part of me should be thrown away? Which part of me made everything of me worth forgetting?

I want to tell you there’s been nobody after you. Nobody that mattered. Nobody that felt significant. Nobody that reminds me of the 5am through your eyes. The 6am through your lakeside balcony.

The 7am me in your mouth.

Nobody that feels like you at night
and smells of me in the morning.